


Master of Puppets

by Blue_Flare



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22686220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Flare/pseuds/Blue_Flare
Summary: LINK VRAINS was apparently free from disasters, but an unknown entity started causing chaos by erasing monster cards. Nobody understands this illogical phenomenon, which caused a severe market crash for SOL Tech. However, this event was a sign that a dangerous army was about to start chaos in Den City and LINK VRAINS.
Relationships: OC/OC, Revolver | Kougami Ryouken/Spectre
Kudos: 3





	Master of Puppets

LINK VRAINS was opened again after Ai’s defeat, being full of users willing to duel in a safer place. This new version was more complex to keep in check, because it allowed traveling into other worlds. However, most users rarely went beyond the normal locations, so barely anyone had any clue of what this change implied.

The Knights of Hanoi protected the network as part of their punishment, otherwise they would be rotting in jail for ten or more years. The lieutenants and Pandor did the computer work at the yacht, while Revolver and Spectre were busy scanning most corners of the server.

Playmaker was nowhere to be found despite passing a few months since his last encounter with Ai. His friends hoped that he would come back home, but they failed to find any clues about his current location. The Dark Ignis kept floating around the internet, slowly recovering fragments of his lost data. He barely recalled anything about his past life, therefore he had no clear memories about the Cyberse nor his dead comrades. His @Ignister monsters had no master until he managed to retrieve his deck.

The simulations of doom were averted, and everyone lived happily without worrying about being enslaved by evil AI. Lightning and Bohman were vague memories at this point, and nobody thought that Ai could be lurking around the internet. However, SOL Technologies had a bad habit of playing with fire despite dealing with cyberterrorists and a megalomaniac Ignis. Opening gates to different worlds seemed like a non-issue for now, but Akira nor his workers had any idea about the entities that lived in planets like Brandt and Cray.

Cray was a planet similar to Earth, with a continental distribution that resembled the one seen during the era of dinosaurs. Many kinds of monsters inhabited it, some being peaceful scientists, while others preferred to wage war with other nations. Their technology was more advanced than human devices, therefore any invasion would be devastating. Dr. Kogami’s calculations only considered the existence of the Ignis, ignoring that other beings could appear after the extermination of these AI.

However, Brandt was a bigger menace. This planet was ruled by the Wandering Starcorpse Ruler, an alien that devoured all the worlds that it encountered. Currently it was using the Duel Spirit world as their current meal, letting the Deletor army loose to wreak havoc. None of the duelists expected that their beloved monsters would be mercilessly deleted by Greion and other menacing aliens. Spell and trap cards were safe from the effect of the Delete End, but the card game was in danger. If the monsters weren’t erased, the survivors were chained by the Star-Vaders, who were led by a cyber dragon known as The Clown. The monsters were forced to wear the rings of Link Joker as symbol of their corruption, losing their mind and soul.

The complaints about missing monster cards increased during the next months. Newer sets suddenly vanished from the market, causing chaos in the supply chain of the card game. The data of at least twenty percent of the monster cards stored in Link VRAINS disappeared from the whole system, leaving SOL Technologies in a state of confusion. The monsters that existed at the moment were the Cyberse ones, monsters from other types and strange looking versions of old monsters, which now had black and red rings around their bodies.

This wasn’t the only abnormality detected at SOL Tech. It was reported that someone snuck into Queen’s headquarters. However, the camera footage didn’t show any images of the intruder. This time she didn’t suffer brain damage and she wasn’t in charge of the company, but she was acting oddly after the incident. She claimed to be someone called Destiny Conductor, who was chosen to fulfill the will of the Wandering Starcorpse Ruler. Of course, this sounded like a mere madwoman comment, so most of the workers didn’t care much about her nonsense.

  
Akira Zaizen had a hot potato in his hands, thinking how he could solve this disaster. Playmaker always saved him before, stopping the destruction of LINK VRAINS and Lightning’s plans. However, this time he was missing, and nobody knew about his whereabouts. The current CEO ran out of options, grabbing his coffee while he felt defeated. He had many bounty hunters at his disposal, even though they rarely achieved anything. Only Go Onizuka and Blood Shepherd had any talent at dueling.  
This was the price that Zaizen paid for relying on Yusaku Fujiki. The savior of mankind couldn’t save everyone now. He decided to send his bounty hunters to inspect LINK VRAINS, hoping that they would be useful now.

  
‘I have to contact Kusanagi. He’s Playmaker’s ally, so he should know about his location,’ he thought, verifying that his Tindangle deck was intact.

  
Akira wrote a message to his workers, asking them to notify which decks still worked in the system. He was relieved when he read that Aoi’s decks still existed, but it was concerning that at least twenty percent of the monsters were gone, while others showed strange black and red rings on their bodies. As far as he was aware, none of the Ignis could alter existing monsters.

  
Hayami went to his office, showing footage confirming that nobody lost their monsters after a duel. The monsters just vanished suddenly.

  
-I haven’t found more information in LINK VRAINS about this deletion. I confirmed that none of the decks of the former bounty hunters nor of the people that saved VRAINS are damaged, but I don’t know what or who caused this, - she informed to her boss.

  
-Didn’t find you any signs of hacking? Maybe someone deleted part of the database out of spite, - Akira wondered.

  
-No, I found zero traces of access into the database. The cards were gone without any explanation, - Hayami sighed. She didn’t understand what was happening.

  
-First Queen starts acting weird and now some cards are randomly gone. Could be her attacker be behind this? – he asked, shaking his head and drinking coffee for calming down.

  
\- Maybe, I only can say that whoever did this should have no connections to the Knights of Hanoi nor that strange buff AI that hacked LINK VRAINS months ago. I don’t know if any hacker can help us to be honest, - she felt defeated as she couldn’t help her beloved boss.

  
SOL Technologies was a headless chicken at the moment, running around without any aim. Despair grew stronger there, which feed the monsters that lurked in another world.

  
In the meantime, Café Nagi had a decent number of customers. Soichi grilled hot dogs and his younger brother prepared coffee for dealing faster with their orders. Jin was way better since the end of Lightning’s plans, and he slowly went back to school for recovering all his lost years. The younger Kusanagi brother went to remedial classes, since he couldn’t study until now.

  
Aoi and Miyu sometimes bought hot dogs after class. Miyu was discharged from the hospital a few months ago, and she managed to not lose more than one school year. Aoi wasn’t sure how to explain why her friend fell into a coma, since explaining the cause was difficult for her. She thought about giving Miyu her Marincess deck, but there was a risk of reviving the memories of the Lost Incident if she explained how she got the deck in the first place.

  
Ryoken and Spectre were part of the customers that hanged out at the Café, who were busy watching the news about the card game market crash.

  
-Heh, SOL Tech is in serious trouble. They can’t explain what’s happening to their customers, which is very amusing, - Ryoken chuckled evilly, being relaxed by the fact that his dragons were intact. - Whoever caused this must be very clever.

  
-Master Ryoken, I know that you despise them for what they did to your father. However, don’t you think that we may be attacked later by this person? I doubt that we may be spared if the author wasn’t only willing to attack SOL, - Spectre was worried. The incident made no sense at all, implying that whoever was behind it could be dangerous.

  
-Hm, you have a valid point. We will have to research this problem if that’s the case. After all, we’re in charge of protecting LINK VRAINS. I will tell the rest to sneak into the code to see if anything is going wrong, - Ryoken suggested, eating his hot dog carelessly.

  
Soichi listened to their talk, taking mental notes. Indeed, this situation was very strange. He couldn’t think a reason why someone would bother to only delete monster cards, leaving everything else intact. It just didn’t add up, as all their former enemies wanted to destroy the network or to kill all humans.

  
He heard that he got a new message, so he asked Jin to keep grilling the hot dogs.

  
‘A message from Akira. Let’s see what problem he has now,’ he opened the e-mail, expecting this was just some bad hacking problem.

  
‘Queen was attacked again? Don’t they have any footage of who broke into her office now? Ok, this seems too surreal,’ Soichi gritted his teeth, not believing what he just read. The fact that Queen went mad at the same time the deletions started was concerning.

  
‘Yusaku probably would figure out the connection between those events, but I can’t find him at all,’ - he sighed, guessing he would need to ask Takeru to help him.

  
-Brother, are you fine? – Jin asked, as he didn’t have to sell any hot dogs at the moment.

  
\- I really don’t get what’s going on. I got this message from Zaizen, and nothing adds up. For sure this doesn’t resemble Ai’s shenanigans, - Soichi commented to his younger brother.

  
-Lightning was bad for sure, but I don’t think he planned this as well. It seems to not follow any kind of logic, - Jin noticed after reading the message.

  
\- The only weird names are Destiny Conductor and Wandering Starcorpse Ruler. This is our only clues about whatever happened to SOL Tech, - the older Kusanagi brother mentioned, searching for those keywords. Sadly, he found nothing during his search.

  
Ryoken and Spectre were gone, so he had no chances to comment this issue with them. He didn’t fully trust them, but he didn’t know more duelists that stood any chance against an unknown enemy.

  
More customers came, including some people that had a foreign accent. One of them was a redhead guy that looked like he didn’t sleep at all during the day, while the other one was a woman that looked way too much like Blue Angel. She ordered three hot dogs and two black coffees.

  
-I would prefer to buy pizza, but this should be good enough. That damn project took too long to finish, - the redhead complained, being too tired to bother about the market crash news.

  
Soichi was thinking it was a fever dream, since he thought that the woman was just a fan of Blue Angel. The woman denied it, claiming that was how she looked normally.

  
-I’m really not a fan of any idols. I’m too old for that, - the woman laughed at Kusanagi’s remark. – By the way, two of the hot dogs are for the hungry nerd.

  
The redhead ate both hot dogs quickly, commenting that they tasted better than the ones he usually bought.

-To be honest, I don’t care if SOL Tech has money issues now. They’re a bunch of thieves and this is just their karma, - the redhead said after paying attention to the news.  
Soichi was curious about the new customer’s remark, so he tried to get some information from the redhead.

-I can’t tell this to someone I don’t know. It’s a personal beef I have with their way of dealing with computer programs, - the redhead replied, leaving the hot dog seller in the dark. – However, anyone that works at informatics knows about the security holes that they have in their codes.

  
Soichi didn’t say anything, as he was perfectly aware of it. He didn’t want to blow his cover as a hacker.

  
That day surely was a strange one. It was just the start of a bunch of unfortunate events.

**Author's Note:**

> This will take more references from Vanguard, so expect more weird surprises later. The character that looks like Blue Angel is Mystayre's OC. More characters will appear during the next chapters. Also all the references will be explained in time, but at the moment I can't tell much without ruining the surprises.
> 
> I hope you liked this crossover.


End file.
